Innehållsförteckning för November 2024 från Fast Bikes

TESTED BY: Bruce TIME: Two months RRP: From £949.99 WEB: www.nevis.uk.com I never like to take chances when it comes to riding kit, with perhaps the biggest red line being what I put on my head. After all, you’ve only got one of them, so why risk it? That said, price can have a lot of influence on decision-making, and when you hear that the new Shark Aeron GP will set you back £949.99 of King Charles’s finest pounds, it’ll possibly make you stop and think twice before clicking the ‘buy now’ button. Of course, there’s reason behind the GP’s price tag., in fact, there are many that add together to make up the marvel of this latest-generation lid. At its heart is a class-leading level of safety, benefiting from an innovative COVA (Carbon…

How big a decision was it for you to go to a double-sided swingarm? As a brand, we are focused on racing, so from one side of Ducati there was a big request from the racing department, from Gigi Dall’Igna, for help with the chassis. They had arrived at the technological limit of the single-sided swingarm - something that could cope with the added power and reality of modern tyres. They needed something that would allow more grip, more consistency, and so on, so there was from one side this clear request, and we said we cannot do this because have had this single-sided swingarm since the 916; it’s an icon for us. But in the end, we want to keep winning, so we decided to build and compare the…

In short, Yamaha isn’t afraid to try new stuff out on actual production bikes rather than R&D-based prototypes. Yamaha’s latest piece of tech got us thinking and made us take a look back at some of the ideas it’s pioneered over the years, the caveat being that obviously there may well be some obscure, small-volume manufacturer that dabbled with some of the concepts before Yamaha did, but to our knowledge, Yamaha was the first to put them into mass production. Some ideas turned out to actually be so good that they became industry standard and copied by literally everyone… some turned out to be good in theory, but not so in practice. So, without further ado, here are some of Yamaha’s notable left-field’ ideas. 20-valve engines First seen in 1985…

FEATURE SOPHISTICATED SUSPENSION Think of race suspension and most of us will think of Öhlins. Even those outside a competitive paddock know that the Swedish suspension specialist is widely regarded as the benchmark against which all other suspension manufacturers of shocks and forks are measured. How many times have you heard someone say, “just like Öhlins” or “nearly as good as Öhlins”? For anyone seeking out the best, those instantly recognisable yellow springs and that small Öhlins logo are the start point. I’m sure Kenth Öhlin, who launched the company from his dad’s garage in 1976, couldn’t have dreamed what his one-man race shop would one day achieve. In winning the MotoGP riders’ world championship with Ducati and Francesco Bagnaia last year, Öhlins Racing secured its sixth title in a row!…

How many times do you sit there and think, “I wish I knew back then what I know now…” I do it all the time, more so than when it comes to my bikes, and more specifically, riding them. I’ve matured in my racing massively in the last seven or eight years and think I probably have more bike control now than ever. I certainly have more feel for the what the bike is doing, and I can give feedback better than ever before. Added to that, I’m definitely more patient! There’s one area that I reckon is often overlooked though, and that’s the fitness it takes to race bikes. Honestly, if one more person ever says to me, “well, you just have to sit there and turn the throttle,…

MASTERCLASS If you’ve been a naughty biker, you need some decent legal advice. Get it from mail@whitedalton.co.uk Q I was out riding and stopped for lunch. A group of bike coppers turned up and we got chatting. They were really friendly and mentioned something about Operation SNAP being the main source of prosecutions these days. I didn’t want to sound silly so went with the conversation. What is Op SNAP? And should us bikers be worried? A Yes. Yes, you should! Operation SNAP has been going on for a few years now, but it has grown year on year; a quick search online shows the number of reported incidents increased 30% from 2023 to 2024. Op SNAP is an online police tool whereby road users can upload their own video…

Triumph Speed Twin 1200 RS Triumph has unveiled a new, updated Speed Twin 1200, plus a brand-new RS version, that adds some sweet chassis upgrades to the stylish modern classic roadster. First launched in 2018, the Speed Twin uses the firm’s high-output 1200 Bonneville parallel-twin engine in a sporty naked classic chassis, with some tasty running gear and a premium finish. It got a refresh in 2021, but 2025 will see a full overhaul with more power, and a higher-spec RS model added to the range. Both the standard 1200 and the RS get a new engine tune, with bigger throttle body and revised cam on the liquid-cooled eight-valve SOHC twin. There’s not a big jump in performance; about 5bhp more peak power, up to 103.5bhp@7750rpm, while torque stays as…

There are some new bikes that come along and grab your attention for less time than it takes to tie a shoelace… and then there are bikes like Ducati’s new Panigale V4 - a simply exceptional machine that’s littered in so many performanceinducing intricacies that even the likes of Einstein would need a lie-down after getting through half of them. As for me, my brain was fried after reading the first of many pages about this new model’s raft of features and heavily revised focus. To put it simply, there’s never been a Ducati quite like this before so, before you go down the route of thinking it’s just a tarted-up take on the model that came before it, think again. No less than 94% of the Panigale is new,…

Racing classic bikes was almost unimaginable to me a few years ago, mainly thanks to the fact that I was so focused on chasing my superbike dream in BSB that everything else was in the peripheral. If it wasn’t a tricked-up modern-day racer loaded with goodies and an aero fairing to match, then I really couldn’t get too excited about it. But as fate would have it, and I found myself taking a step back from the ‘serious’ scene, all of a sudden, the BSB blinkers were off and I could start to appreciate racing of all types. Classic racing, however, wasn’t on my radar until my old mate Danny Webb asked if I fancied standing in for him at the first round of the European Classic Endurance Championship at…

In many ways, Superstock is the ultimate production racing class. Its regs are tighter than the proverbial gnat’s chuff, with only minimal mods allowed. You can’t do anything to the engine apart from add crash protection covers, you can change the exhaust and air filter, and do some minimal fuelling mods, using only homologated ECUs and approved parts. You can take off the radiator fan and change the water hoses, fit a shiny stone protector, put on extra fuel filters… but nothing else, really. The chassis regs are a tiny bit looser, though the frame, rear subframe, swingarm, fork outers and yokes all need to be as standard. The tech guys had to be persuaded not to insist on compulsory centrestands, apparently. You can, however, change the front fork internals,…

JOHNNY TIME ON TEST FOUR MONTHS ODOMETER MILES BHP: 124 GAIN: 0 NEXT AIM: GET RID OF THE EURO 5 GUFF (STILL). As I sit down to type this latest update on my life with the Kawasaki ZX-6R, it is with a sense of frustration that due to the nature of my diary and magazine print deadlines, literally the very next thing I’m doing once I finish this piece is taking the bike and a very posh Arrow exhaust system to MSS performance, where it’s finally going to get dyno’d. Then I’ll be throwing some spanners at it before it gets dyno’d again to see what, if any, gains are found from junking the Euro 5 guff that’s clogging up the standard exhaust. I say finally because no sooner did…

THAT’S THE LOOK: This is the slipperiest Panigale V4 yet. The whole of the bike’s bodywork has been redesigned, resulting in a 4% reduction in drag. The package also encourages better cooling, while the twin air intakes of old have been dropped in favour of a hidden single air intake. At the rear of the bike, the new seat unit is more spacious and generous on the rider than before, meaning there’s more scope for moving around with ease. Last but not least, Ducati isn’t holding back in saying that the look of the bodywork was heavily influenced by its iconic 916. Throw in a new, bigger screen, plus quintessential wings, and you end up with a very saucy-looking Ducati. PUSHING THE LIMITS: The headline is that the power-to-weight ratio…

FEATURE YAMAHA Y-AMT GEARBOX This isn’t the first time that Yamaha has dabbled with gearboxes that are operated by hand. It dipped its toe into the concept back in 2006 with the FJR1300 YCCS, which was a pretty agricultural hydraulic system, even by the standards of the day. However, it did signal intent by Yamaha that there was some merit to be had by pushing a button instead of actuating a crude lever long enough to accommodate a booted foot underneath it. The FJR1300 YCCS came and went in the blink of an eye, and being blunt, it was never missed. Fast-forward nearly 20 years, and thanks entirely to the fact that bikes are now all ride-by-wire - something Yamaha was the first to put into production - and with seemingly…

Yamaha prides itself in developing clever engineering solutions to overcome problems, and while not every result is successful (err, Niken, GTS1000, MT-01…), some most certainly are. In the 1980s, when the firm was looking at extracting more performance from its inline-four engines, the R&D team came up with a five-valve cylinder head design, which was first used on the FZ750 in 1985. Why does this matter when it comes to the 2007 YZF-R1? Ever since the FZ750, all of Yamaha’s big-capacity sportsbikes ran a five-valve head, but this generation of R1 reverted back to a four-valve design, ending 22 years of technology in one fell swoop… While this may sound like quite a dramatic decision, the truth of the matter is that the five-valve head design had simply run its…

FEATURE ALEX SNOW GASGAS OFF-ROAD EXPERIENCE “I CHANGED INTO MY ‘80S-THEMED RIDING KIT, COMFORTED THAT EVERYONE ELSE WAS WEARING THE SAME.” Since the very beginning of my time as a motorcyclist way back in the mid-1980s, I’ve only ever ridden on the road or track, and thanks to the very privileged position I’ve been in for the past near 20 years, I’ve been lucky enough to have ridden enough different bikes, roads and tracks to last a hundred lifetimes, but I’d never ridden off-road until last year, when I spent a few hours doing a very basic taster session with Vanessa Ruck, aka The Girl on a Bike. When I say basic, I mean basic for someone who knows what they’re doing, but I had no clue - like literally no…

STAR LETTER WHAT A CORKER Hi guys, I bought a new bike back in May, a Triumph Trident 660. It was a change of direction from the SV650 I had before it, but a few months in, it’s fair to say I’m loving it. The engine is awesome, with loads of torque and character. It sounds really decent too. It’s hard to fault the bike for how it handles. It’s so easy to throw around, and the relaxed riding position is another bonus. The Trident came fully loaded with goodies like a shifter and blipper, and I’m also a fan of how interactive the dash is through the My Triumph App. I’ve done quite a lot of riding on it this summer and I now wouldn’t want to be without it, but if…